SciencePoles news
Recent Polar Science and Climate Change news are featured here. Our news RSS feed will inform you when news are published on this website.
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New Study Shows Emperor Penguins May Be Heading towards Extinction
27.01.2009
The Emperor Penguin might be heading for extinction, according to a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on January 26th, 2009. This species of penguins - the largest one in the world and the only one breeding during winter on…
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Wilkins Ice Shelf on Brink of Collapse
20.01.2009
The Wilkins ice shelf in Antarctica is on the brink of collapse says David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Since losing a large part of its mass last year, the ice shelf has been held together by a shrinking 40-km (25-mile) strip of ice that is…
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Young Emperor Penguins Find Their Way in Life by Themselves
20.01.2009
Unlike lducklings nad cygnets, young emperor penguins are left to fend for themselves as early as five months after their birth. The hungry fledglings have to find open water and learn how to hunt all by themselves, and until now, researchers were still guessing at where the young penguins went…
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Polarstern to Drop 20 Tonnes of Iron Sulphate near Antartica
13.01.2009
The Polarstern, a German research ship from the Alfred Wegener Institute, has left Cape Town, South Africa and is now on a mission near the island of South Georgia in the Southern Ocean. The ship is being used for the LOHAFEX experiment, a collaboration between German and Indian scientists. The…
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Melting Arctic Sea Ice Leads to Colder Winter in the North Atlantic
12.01.2009
A research team led by Kjetil VÅge and Robert Pickart of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution examined new data collected from robotic floats that have been drifting in the Labrador and Irminger Seas in the North Atlantic for several years now. The floats, which monitor the sinking of cold water,…
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Greenland’s Glaciers Losing Ice Faster than Last Year’s Record Rate of Loss
18.12.2008
Ohio State researchers monitoring the loss of ice from Greenland's outlet glaciers report that the amount of ice lost during the summer of 2008 is nearly three times the area lost during thesummer of 2007, which already was a record in itself. The boreal summer of 2007 saw the GreenlandIce…
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New Research Findings Predict Seasonally Ice-Free Arctic by 2015
12.12.2008
Dr. David Barber, University of Manitoba Arctic expert Canada's Research Chair in Arctic System Science, presented the findings of a 15-month research expedition, which concluded that the Arctic will be seasonally ice-free by the middle of the next decade, creating unpredictable consequences for Inuit communities, wildlife and the entire northern…
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Subglacial Microbial Life
20.11.2008
A scientist from Louisiana State University reported to the European Science Foundation and COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) meeting, held last October, that he had found evidence of microbes living in the subglacial lakes of Antarctica.
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Subglacial Floods in Antarctica Push Glaciers Out to Sea
20.11.2008
Byrd Glacier is one of the largest glaciers in East Antarctica. A recent study conducted by the Climate Change Institute at the University of MaineA provide the first evidence that active lake drainage systems under the ice can cause large and rapid changes in glacier dynamics.
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Sunlight Distribution Is a Key Factor for Deep Ocean Circulation
12.11.2008
A new study goes against the belief that Northern Hemisphere ice volume (mainly North American ice sheets) influences ocean circulation during glacial periods. Lorraine Lisiecki and colleagues found out that the distribution of sunlight is the key variable that explains changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last…
